BILLIE STANTON
Tucson Citizen
October 17, 2007
Tough love, they call it. The common American prescription for troubled teens, the too-common precursor to abuse and death.
A date-rape victim who suffered depresson was sent to a Utah wilderness program to build confidence and self-esteem.
She would die in the Arizona desert after the camp's "highly trained survival experts" got lost, unwittingly crossed the state line and for five days dismissed her classic symptoms of dehydration as "faking it."
She was 15. No charges were filed in her 2001 death.
That was a bad year in Arizona. At American Buffalo Soldiers boot camp near Buckeye, youths were fed one apple for breakfast, one carrot for lunch and a bowl of beans for dinner.
On the day he died, Anthony Haynes, 14, started eating dirt while forced to sit for hours in the midday sun in 113-degree heat.
He later vomited mud. An autopsy found that the boy was dehydrated and malnourished, dying July 2, 2001, of "near drowning brought on by dehydration."
Now, finally, the abuse and deaths of children in boot camps, wilderness camps and the like are getting federal attention.
Grieving parents testified before Congress last week, following a new report by the General Accountability Office.
During 2005 alone, 33 states reported 1,619 staff incidents of abuse, the GAO's investigation found.
Most of the 10 deaths the agency chose to review were marked by commonalities - from bad management to untrained staff, from vicious manipulation to reckless or negligent practices.
All those failures were obvious in an Arizona "boot camp" death in 1998.
Nicholaus Contreraz, 16, died at the Arizona Boys Ranch in Oracle.
He had been forced to exercise strenuously, and he, too, was accused of "faking" fevers, vomiting and other symptoms of his massive but undiagnosed lung infection.
Five ranch employees were charged in his death; all the counts were dropped.
The Arizona Boys Ranch was closed, its license rescinded on Aug. 27, 1998.
Now the site is home to the Sycamore Canyon High Impact Camp, under new ownership and management.
Rite of Passage, a Nevada for-profit company, operates the Oracle unit as well as the Canyon State Academy group home in Queen Creek.
Whether either place is helpful often depends on the teenager, says Eva Bacal, a public defender for Pima County Juvenile Court.
Some athletic teens respond well to Canyon State, which emphasizes exercise, she notes.
But how do Arizonans - or parents anywhere, for that matter - know which camps are safe? We don't.
State oversight of the camps and programs varies greatly, and federal oversight doesn't exist.
U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., wants to change that. He says he'll introduce legislation early next year to give the federal government a role in regulating these camps.
Clearly, such oversight is desperately needed.
Taxpayers dole out hundreds of dollars a day for each delinquent youth sent for this "therapy," but many such camps and programs have proven to be more troubled than their clients.
The three teenagers whose Arizona cases are chronicled here all were subjected to cruel and unusual treatment resulting in death.
Yet no one from the Utah camp or Arizona Boys Ranch ever was tried or convicted.
Charles Long, director of the Buffalo Soldiers camp, was sentenced to six years for manslaughter in the death of Anthony Haynes.
Long, however, had quite a history.
The Apache Tribal Council had closed his first boot camp in Whiteriver in July 2000 after youths reported being kicked and choked by staff. (The next spring, Long opened the Buckeye camp.)
Long had been fined and put on probation in 1991 after his arrest in Phoenix on charges of punching a woman. That followed his 1989 arrest for allegedly bashing in the same woman's front door with a sledgehammer.
That didn't stop Arizona from sending kids to the Buckeye camp, however, where Anthony Haynes paid the ultimate price.
Such tragedies demonstrate a clear need for tight regulations - a need that the GAO report underscores and a need that states have failed to meet.
Congress must clamp down on these camps. If states can't ensure the youths' safety, perhaps the federal government can.
Billie Stanton may be reached at bstanton@tucsoncitizen.com and 573-4664.
